Nigerian Private School Headteacher Charged For Smacking Girls Hand With Ruler.

Joseph and Rally Ikiebe.
The headmistress of a Christian private school punished a nine-year-old girl by rapping her on the knuckles with a ruler before drawing blood by hitting her on the head, a court heard. Rally Ikiebe, 50, allegedly regularly hit pupils at the £8,000-a-year Chrysolyte Independent School in Southwark, South London.
On this occasion, the headteacher beat the girl after she heard talking coming from one of the classrooms.  She blamed the schoolgirl, who cannot be named for legal reasons, and hit her between five and ten times on the knuckles with a ruler 'so it would hurt more', it is claimed. The girl, who fell off chair and lay crying on the floor as she was hit, was also struck twice across her head, Inner London Crown Court heard. She was hit with such force that her hands were bruised and her head started bleeding on the bus home from school, it is claimed. In a police interview, played on TV screens to the jury, the girl revealed that teachers at the school would often use rulers for beating. She said her teacher, known as ‘Matron’, told her to 'put her hands out' and then told her to turn them 'that way, knuckles up'. The pupil said: 'She got a flexible ruler and she hit me on the knuckles hard. The child’s mother took photos of her daughter’s injuries and phoned Ikiebe and her husband, Reverend Joseph Ikiebe, a co-founder of the school, to complain. The couple went around to her home with a bottle of TCP at around midnight on the night of the incident, on January 17 last year, the court heard. They begged her mother not to make a police complaint and to forgive Ikiebe because they were both Christians.
DM